Subdivision of bioware made star wars

[Sirsri]

C. The solution to this problem is simple, Don't release your MMO without server transfers at the start. If you were to cut SWTOR's servers in half right now, the game would probably have a pretty healthy population, Right now that population is spread out on far to many servers.

 

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Server transfers can exacerbate problems though, as people pile onto a small handful of massively overpopulated servers, and then there are bunch of almost, or completely empty ones that need to be shut down. That creates for layers of bad press. Then you get into needing to offer free transfers to people on the ones being shut down (and how many people will simply wait for that), and so on.

 

The whole game was designed around a 'first 3 days' problem, which sounds like some MBA analyst thought that MMO subs were determined based on the experience of the first 3 days. That's the normal level of thinking you'd expect from an MBA, and it worked out about as well as anyone with an actual understanding of MMO's would have expected.

 

Server transfers would be handy, but they're more of a bandaid on a knife wound because they didn't facilitate an in game community, and lost subs. The phase the game is in right now they *should* (but aren't) be gradually increasing subs numbers and having more and more people randomly joining existing servers. Right now they don't really need transfers so much as to shut down 70 or so servers and move those people onto other realms, and then give people effective ways to build relationships with other players.

 

A server transfer should be for when you want to play with a friend on a different server, or when you need to change time zones to find somewhere new, and those sorts of things. It shouldn't be a tool to deal with a dead server, the problem there is the dead server. Put another way, server transfers should exist to facilitate an individual players particular needs, but low population isn't a personal reason to move, it's a serious problem that needs to be addressed for the hundreds of thousands of players who are all being screwed.

 

Allowing people to move servers won't change the fact that the game has a lot of things wrong with it driving people away. Not that trapping people on an empty server exactly inspires confidence either.